


Me and My Pal Johnny Walker

by ArtemisRae



Series: For the Unknown [6]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: F/M, Gen, Worldbuilding, drinking instead of feeling emotions, el and max are BFF, el dealing with PTSD, everybody on this show is traumatized, good dad chief hopper, people want to take care of El, teenagers are horrible
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-02
Updated: 2018-04-02
Packaged: 2019-04-17 02:44:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14178813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArtemisRae/pseuds/ArtemisRae
Summary: But I stayed home insteadJust me and my pal Johnny WalkerAnd his brothers Black and RedAnd we drank alone, yeah-George Thorogood, I Drink AloneAfter bringing El in, Hopper tried to live a healthier lifestyle and break bad habits, but raising a teenager is much harder than he ever anticipated, and sometimes it just can't be helped. Five times El compels Hopper to drink, and one time she has no idea.





	Me and My Pal Johnny Walker

**Author's Note:**

> Both mine and Juxtaposie's next plot related pieces in this series are spiraling out into something much bigger than we ever anticipated. So I pulled together this fic to give everyone a glimpse into El's life in high school with Hopper, and give everyone an idea of how we ended up with Darling, Speed Your Love to Me (which, if you haven't read it is Juxtaposie's super amazing fic about how Mike and El got married).
> 
> This is mostly headcanons, but the second section, in particular, is essentially a preview of Juxtaposie's next fic. I wish what I've written does justice to the actual thing - trust me, I've read what she's working on. You aren't going to know what hit you.

He found El sitting at the kitchen table, homework spread around her, when he got home. It was unusual to see her there - typically, if she wasn't parked in front of the television or out with her friends, then she was in her bedroom, door closed. It wasn’t something that had ever offended him. She was a teenager and it was her personal space, which was something she’d never had before moving into the cabin with him. The kitchen table was their communal space.

The October air had a bite to it, and he was surprised a second time to find that she hadn’t bothered to light the furnace. Glancing at her out of the corner of his eye and noting her total absorption in her work, he hung up his hat and coat, and set about getting their living space warmed up.

El didn't even seem to notice he was there. She was bent low over her homework - book flipped open, notebook filled with what looked like half-scribbled notes, and a pencil worrying between her teeth.

"Hey," he said gently, reaching and pulling the pencil out. "Didn't we talk about that being bad for your teeth?"

Hopper thought about dentists, and whether or not it was worth bringing up that argument again. When she was ill enough to need a doctor he paid through the nose for house calls, willing to do anything to avoid triggering unpleasant memories. Among the things that upset her the most were latex gloves and face masks - basic PPE that ultimately was unavoidable at the dentist. 

He’d only brought it up once, and she’d made a huge show of brushing and flossing twice a day for almost three months until he’d caved. As long as El was eating okay and didn’t seem to be in pain he wasn’t going to press the issue.

All the same, he was cringing as he dropped the pencil on top of her notes. It looked like it had been taking abuse for some time. “What are you working on?”

She looked up at him, lower lip pouted. With her big doe eyes it made her seem much younger than she actually was; hard to believe she was going on fifteen, a freshman in high school, when sometimes the expression on her face forcefully reminded him of the child with hypothermia that he’d guided out of the woods.

“History,” she mumbled, hanging her head and pulling the book closer to her. 

“Ugh.” He snorted, and turned to the freezer to see what he could heat up for dinner. “Didn’t we just spend all weekend on that shit?”

Maybe it was because he had only performed the bare minimum to graduate high school - and even that had involved being friendly with some of the teachers, charming enough to get a couple Fs bumped up to Ds - but the kid seemed to bring home way more work than he ever remembered having to do in school. She had spent hours over the weekend, stressed about an essay for English and a test in history, her two worst subjects.

Math and science made the most sense to her, which Hopper could understand. Math and science both involved a fair amount of logic, and had rules to follow. English was confusing, and history was just overwhelming - too much to memorize, too fast. There was too much she was supposed to have learned when she was younger. The kid knew the Russian word for _submarine_ , but couldn’t always name the three branches of government.

“Yeah,” she replied, already distracted. “I gotta study more though.”

He shrugged, only half listening, mentally sorting their groceries and trying to decide what would be both fast and something El would willingly eat. He didn’t have it in him to argue with her over kidney beans tonight.

Finally, he pulled one of the Last Resort Casseroles from the freezer. They were a regular gift from Karen Wheeler, who usually sent one home with El once a week when she joined the Wheelers for dinners - _“I know you keep late hours sometimes, Chief,”_ she’d explained when he’d called to thank her. “ _I just thought it might help for you to have something easy to heat up instead of worrying about cooking._ ”

Tonight’s casserole was tuna. Hopper hummed in appreciation and tossed it on the counter to defrost while the oven was heating up.

She was quiet while he put together dinner, focused on work. The first sign of a problem came when he tried to pull her away to eat. She didn't even lift her head when he put the plate in front of her.

He gave her a grace period of two minutes, long enough for him to get a beer from the fridge and sit across from her, but when she was still scribbling notes he reached out and tapped a finger on the book. "Come on El, what did we talk about?"

It had been something that he'd noticed vaguely before she started school, but something that had become much more obvious now that she was a legally enrolled student, and that was the fact that El was quite simply used to working without a break until she was exhausted.

The implications of her work ethic were distressing to say the least. Hawkins Lab hadn't given her much of a formal education, which meant there were other ways they had drilled such discipline into her. It was chilling when taken into consideration with the fact that she often failed to tell him when she felt ill, exhausted, or just plain needed a break.

She gave him a dark look. "I need to study."

"You need to eat dinner first, before that gets cold,” Hopper countered, pointing at the plate with his fork. "After dinner we can finish up any homework."

"Not homework,” El said quietly, eyes dropping back to the book. "Studying. Too far behind."

That was a given, and this was not the first time she had been anxious about trying to pass as a regular student.

Still, he was under the impression that her grades weren't terrible. "What happened?" he asked. "Failed your test?"

Her cheeks colored. "No."

"Someone say something?" Hopper pressed, and was rewarded by the way El's shoulders stiffened. _Bingo_.

Jane Hopper had a lot stacked against her - small town, scandalous arrival, behind academically, but she was a sweet and pretty girl, and he had heard that she'd been holding her own at school. It helped that she had her little party folded protectively around her, with at least one of them in all of her classes, but not all of her stories from school involved them. It had seemed like she had managed to talk to other people, was making tentative connections, even if she was still half afraid of saying the wrong thing most of the time.

Still, there were bullies everywhere.

"Mrs. Wright," El mumbled, staring so hard at her book he thought she was trying to burn holes into the pages.

Yes there were bullies everywhere. Even the teachers, sometimes.

"And what did Mrs. Wright say?" he asked, determined to keep his patience despite his rising ire. Wright was the gremlin they had teaching history. She should have been punted years ago, but at this point was only teaching the freshman so the school could undo all the damage she did by senior year.

"She asked how I made it to high school without knowing who Lincoln is," El said finally, clearly reluctant, obviously embarrassed.

He took a breath, and asked, hoping against hope, "I'm going to guess she said it in front of the entire class, and not in private conversation?"

El still wouldn't look at him, but finally nodded. Hopper saw red. He hadn't even realized he’d stood up until he heard his fork clatter to the table. "That old toad!"

He hadn't liked the look of her when he'd gone to the open house before school started. Everyone had heard about El by the time school had started, and he'd gone in specifically to meet her teachers, make nice with the principal, and be sure that they all knew that El would have gaps in her knowledge.

He hadn’t been looking for special attention. He’d only been looking to avoid situations exactly like this.

Hard enough to be the new kid in town - but to be mocked for something that couldn’t be helped, and by an authority figure no less?

“I’m going to go down there,” Hopper breathed, fists clenched. El’s head snapped up, eyes wide as she looked at him. “I’m going to -”

He pictured raising hell. He pictured throttling the old lady. He pictured winding up with that stupid hardback history book that El lugged home every night and -

“-And give her a piece of my mind,” he finished in his most threatening tone. El watched him, eyes big and almost fearful as he moved from the table and stood at the counter, debating whether he wanted to look for the phone book, call Mrs. Wright at home and give her fair warning of the hell that he was about to rain down on her -

It wasn’t until El stood up and tugged at his arm that he came back to himself and realized he had been mumbling out loud. “Stop!” she begged, and it was then, taking in the look on her face, that he saw that her distress wasn’t directed at the shrivelled prune who was her history teacher or the public humiliation she’d faced earlier that day - it was because of _him_.

“El,” he said seriously, putting his hands on her shoulders and bending to look at her. “It is completely unacceptable for her to talk to you that way. She shouldn’t talk to anybody that way. The entire reason you’re in school is so you can learn.”

“Don’t,” El said fiercely, jaw set. He hadn’t seen her with this sort of expression since she was demanding to know how much longer until she could see her friends again. 

Mindful of the fact that the previous incident had ended with him wearing breakfast, Hopper reigned himself in. “Don’t what?”

“Don’t talk to her,” El said, turning her head towards her book, refusing eye contact. “She’s mean to everybody.” 

"That doesn't make it okay!" Hopper argued. "Just because she's an old crone doesn't mean that she gets to talk to you that way, especially because she knows-"

"Don't,” El cut him off. "Don't make me..."

She trailed off, visibly frustrated as she looked for the right word. He opened his mouth to pick up the argument, but she noticed and glared at him, raising a finger in a _don’t you dare_ gesture. The more upset she got the harder it was for her to articulate.

"Special,” El finally decided. "Don't make me special. I'm already special."

Translation: don't single her out, because she was already working too hard to blend in at school.

He sighed and sat down again, gazing at her. There was the faintest blush to her cheeks, and her face was serious and worried. Now Hopper could see that she wasn't worried about school - she was worried about _him_.

"You don't want me to say anything?" he asked. She shook her head, curls flying. 

"I want to study,” she said with a tone of finality. He knew from enough arguments with her that she wasn't changing her mind, and if he wasn't in the mood to argue over kidney beans then he certainly wasn't up for a fight like this - something that might end with them both shouting, her crying, and slammed doors.

He wasn't a perfect father, but he was better than he'd been when he'd first found her in the woods. It had been months since the last time he'd come home to find the television dragged into the bedroom, which had become a touchstone for how annoyed she was with him.

Ultimately, what would such an argument be about? His desire to protect her? It was one thing when Hawkins Lab had actively been looking for her, but now she was mostly a normal teenage girl, and her priorities had shifted accordingly.

Hopper worried about spies infiltrating the high school, bugged telephones, strangers following her. He worried about her fitting in at school, keeping up academically, how serious her relationship was with the Wheeler boy ( _very serious_ , by his estimation, and the determined way Mike had situated himself into their lives).

She was worried about her father embarrassing her.

He took a deep breath, flashed a (forced) grin at her, and said, "Okay then."

They sat in silence the rest of the evening. El ate only half of the serving of casserole he'd given her - despite his prompting - and spent most of her time determinedly studying her history book, taking notes in her messy handwriting. At nine on the nose she flipped everything shut, packed it back up into her book bag and disappeared into her room for her daily goodnight radio call from Mike.

Hopper stayed up, sitting at the kitchen table, chin in hand as he smoked a cigarette. At ten he finally got up, got a glass, and opened the bottle of Wild Turkey that he kept in the back of the cabinet.

He was better than he'd been. The pills were gone, the cigarettes and alcohol were both cut back, and he'd eaten more green things in the last two years than he'd eaten his entire life up until this point. It had been a quick realization that El was a sponge, her only frame of reference for life the white sterile lab and a cold scrabble for survival. She was soaking in every single thing she heard and witnessed - a conclusion he had reached the first time she'd stubbed her toe and uttered an expletive that could have only come from him.

Or Henderson, who also had a mouth like a trucker, but Hopper was pretty sure that hadn’t come from the kid.

Which also meant it was up to him to set a better example for her, which meant that while the nightly beer with dinner was overlooked, he tried not to drink anything harder in front of her. His hope was that El would learn other ways of coping with stress before turning to alcohol to decompress - not to mention his sneaking suspicion that alcohol was contraindicated by her telekinetic abilities.

Sometimes though, a man needed a drink.

He sipped the bourbon, and thought about how very unprepared he felt for a situation like this - how he could make preparations and plans for every worst case scenario, but at the end of the day, he could only help El as much as she’d allow.

So he’d respect the boundary that El was trying to set. He’d let her handle this the way she wanted.

As for Mrs. Wright… that bitch always double parked at church on Sundays. He saw a lot of parking tickets in her future.

***

The sun hadn’t yet started to set when he pulled over and turned off the truck, but the sky was dark with ugly gray clouds, and Hopper thought that it might start spitting rain soon. March meant anything from sunshine to blizzards in Indiana, and he was hoping against hope that snow was done until next winter - they all needed a little bit of sunshine right now.

He glanced at his watch as he tramped through the brush - _five one five_ , his brain told him. How had years of trying to break El of that habit only created it in himself?

It hadn’t been easy getting away from work, even with Flo’s help. Flo knew something was going on - _I’ll page you if there’s an emergency_ , she’d said, practically shoving him out the door - but even she didn’t know how bad it really was. She was laboring under the delusion that El had a bad flu, a sickness that had left her bedridden, ill enough to miss school for a week now. 

Flo had been the one to field El’s frantic phone call the previous week, and if Hopper wasn’t already in eternal debt to her for everything she’d ever done for him, the fact that she’d managed to be discreet in front of both Callahan and Powell while simultaneously getting him out of the office on time for the past week meant that he’d never be able to repay her. 

She wasn’t prying either, despite the fact that she was clearly desperate to know what was going on. Every morning she greeted him with her standard apple, and the simple question, “How is she?” and when Hopper’s response was never anything more than a shrug she always dropped it and started running interference. His duties as chief of police couldn’t be ignored, but they could be helped, and Flo was doing everything in her power to lighten the load for him.

Hopper heard Mike before he saw him, and the moment he processed the sound his heart froze. The last time he'd heard Mike Wheeler make that noise the kid had just learned that Hopper had hidden El from him for almost a year.

In less than a second, his mind flashed with all of the worst case scenarios - El dead, succumbed to the battle she'd been fighting within herself, or Mike, finally pushed past the limits of what his sanity could bear - but then Hopper forced himself to stop that train of thought. If something had happened to El, some change in her condition, he would be the first person Mike would call.

The fact was, Mike Wheeler had shown a level of maturity this past week that Hopper had suspected the kid capable of but had never seen demonstrated so nakedly before. He saw it every time he got home from work and Mike peeled himself away from El's still form, reported if she had spoken or eaten anything, he saw it in the way Mike carefully cobbled together El's homework, now piling up on the kitchen table, and he saw it in Mike's patience with Will, who had somehow inserted himself into the situation earlier that week. Any other member of the party, Hopper was sure Mike would have bitten their head off and thrown them out of the cabin. Will was allowed to stay.

It was a lot for a sophomore in high school to process, but Mike hadn’t flinched away yet. A breakdown was probably overdue.

He broke through the clearing and got his first clear view of Mike, standing outside of the trip wire, leaning against a tree. His face was buried in his elbow, and he was bawling his eyes out. Hopper was by no means moving quietly, but Mike didn't even turn his head as Hopper strode into his line of view. The kid’s sobs were heart wrenching.

Hopper watched out of the corner of his eye as Mike, still crying, straightened his shoulders and scrubbed at his face. He took deep breaths, as if trying to calm himself, but broke down again. He wound back one arm, hiccuped, and slammed his fist into the tree. He didn't hesitate, or react to the pain that had to be shooting up his arm. Instead he pulled back his other arm to do the same, fist thudding against the rough bark.

Walking right past him, Hopper left him to it and said nothing. The cabin door was open, and he went directly into El's bedroom, hoping to find -

No. Nothing had changed. El was curled up the same way she had been every other day for the last week. Her eyes were closed, her breathing deep and regular. She was sleeping - actually sleeping, not pretending, or else Wheeler wouldn't have voluntarily pulled himself away from her. Hopper would have said she looked peaceful, if he hadn’t known of the mental chaos of the last week that had made it impossible for her to function. 

There was no sign of Will, who had been a fixture the last couple days. Hopper wasn't sure what that meant.

He reached out and gently put a hand on her head. She didn’t even stir. That was par for the course. Frowning, he noticed the greasy texture of her hair, the stale scent that clung to her and the pillow. It was time to ask Joyce to come over again, help her shower, wash her hair, so he could change the sheets. 

Mind racing, he considered how he could possibly get her the help she needed. The Lab was gone and Doc Owens, long reassigned, was now a distant contact. They exchanged short, coded letters once or twice a year, more for Hopper’s peace of mind than any useful information. He couldn’t take her to the local hospital; how could he possibly explain?

 _She went into this state after reading about the horrible experiments done to her involuntarily as a child, so I dragged her here involuntarily for treatment despite the fact that this place looks and smells the same as the horrible place that caused this mess in the first place_.

Yeah, that was going to go over well. With both the hospital and El. Despite the fact that he’d spent days wracking his brain, what he had explained to Mike when this mess had started was still true. There was no way to get her help without losing her. She’d be taken away, locked up, and there was no way El could tolerate that, even in the name of her health. It would be a fate worse than death.

Like this somehow wasn’t.

"All right kid," Hopper muttered, and turned to leave the bedroom. He could still hear Mike outside, and wondered how much more they could take, and what he could have done differently to prevent this from happening in the first place.

It didn't matter that there was a sane, objective part of his brain that could point out that there hadn't been much he could do - El had been bound and determined to go through her files from the lab, and he had, in fact, promised her that she could have the information if she wanted. Not to mention that the kid had a right to her medical history, deserved knowledge of what had been done to her in the name of her future health. 

Promises were important to El, and he did everything in his power not to break them - even if it meant letting her do something that might hurt.

And this had hurt. It had hurt both of them, though he couldn't even begin to compare his pain to hers. A part of him would forever carry the guilt of this, the same way he felt when he thought of telling El she could see her friends soon, when he remembered all of the times he'd let nurses poke Sara with needles, or when he'd told Diane to go ahead and file for divorce.

He hadn't wanted any of it. But it had all needed to happen, even though it hurt.

Finally shrugging out of his coat, he went into the kitchen and pulled cold cuts out of the fridge. He hadn't eaten a real dinner since El had taken to bed, surviving on sandwiches and cold coffee. It didn't seem fair for him to eat a real dinner when she wouldn't even sit up and make eye contact with him, let alone sit a the table with a knife and fork.

He'd never thought he'd miss arguing about broccoli, but he'd do just about anything to see El's _I cant believe he's going to make me eat this_ face again.

Glancing out the window, he could see Wheeler was still pummeling the tree in front of him. Even in the rapidly darkening woods, Hopper could see that his hands were bleeding. He wished he knew what to tell the kid. Hard enough to feel responsible for El, love her, and to see her so far away from herself that she couldn't even hear them calling to her - but to have teenage hormones amplifying everything he was feeling must have been nearly unbearable.

He watched Mike while he made and ate his sandwich. It might as well have been dirt for all he noticed or cared - he was moving on automatic, and he hardly noticed when it was gone. Wiping his mouth, he turned from the kitchen and got out the step ladder.

It took him a couple minutes to find what he was looking for in the midst of boxes and other detritus that had been shoved into the upper storage cabinet - which, once he thought about it, was probably not good. In the future he should probably make sure the kit was more accessible, instead of relying on El to retrieve anything they might need.

He looked out the window again, and then went into the bathroom and made sure clean towels were laid out.

There wasn’t much he could do for anybody right now. More than anything, it was the sense of helplessness that drove him from the bathroom back into the kitchen, where he reached up into the cabinet and retrieved the bottle of amber liquid.

He took down two glasses, and poured a double into both. Picking up the first, he sipped it, waited thirty seconds for the warmth to spread out from his stomach - and when it didn’t, when he could still feel the hole in his heart, he threw the rest back in a single gulp that made his eyes water.

Then he picked up the second glass, strode to the front door, and opened it.

Mike was standing there, shoulders straight and defiant even with his face flushed and his eyes swollen and red. His hand was still out, as if to reach for the doorknob.

Hopper held out the glass of whiskey. “Here. For the pain in your hands.”

Mike took it, looked down into the glass and said nothing. His knuckles were dripping blood onto the front porch.

“You don’t have to drink it if you don’t want. Either way don’t tell your mother,” Hopper said, turning away from him, trying to help Mike save face. He hadn’t forgotten the way Mike had broken down at the Byers when he’d first seen El again, and he was pretty sure Mike hadn’t either. This was different. This time he couldn’t hold the kid to him, promise him that he was okay. He wasn’t. Hopper wasn’t either. “The first aid kit is on the sink in the bathroom so you can get cleaned up.”

***

She dropped the bomb on him one fine spring morning, late in her junior year of high school. Hopper had woken up in a good mood. The spring weather was turning to summer just enough that they could sleep with the windows open and not be frozen in the mornings, which meant a better night's sleep for Hopper. Something about sleeping surrounded by the sounds of nature was innately soothing - and the kid thought so too. She also slept better on these nights.

He was in the kitchen when she slunk out of the bedroom, wearing a denim skirt and a blindingly pink t-shirt that went with the zebra striped headband pushing her hair out of her eyes. Her backpack was slung over one shoulder, and she was also carrying the duffel where she kept her practice uniform and running shoes.

"Sit," Hopper said sternly, pointing. "You're eating breakfast today, you have track practice. If I get another phone call that you've run until you collapsed I'm going to have a heart attack."

El sat obediently, biting her lip. She made a face at the soft scrambled eggs he served, until he rolled his eyes and handed her a bottle of ketchup.

He was still pushing the sausage patties around the skillet when the toaster popped. "Can you get those please?" Hopper called, and he felt more than heard the _whoosh_ as the toast went flying by his ear and landed in a neat pile on the plate in the center of the table.

She mumbled something at him while he was plating the sausage. "What was that?" he prompted, ducking his head to try and make eye contact.

Her eyes turned to the window, and there was the slightest flush to her cheeks. "Cheerleader tryouts, Friday," El said, using her fork to push her eggs around into the ketchup soup she had created.

"You want to be a cheerleader?" Hopper asked, eyebrows raising. It was not a desire she'd ever expressed before, but if she wanted to try out, what was the harm? "I mean, go for it, just don't feel bad if you don't make the cut. Sometimes they're picky about the type of girl-"

"I made it," El cut him off, finally looking at him. Her blush was even more pronounced now. "Tryouts were last Friday. Found out yesterday. They have bootcamp all summer."

Hopper stared, mouthing for words. "That's - that's good!"

 _Jesus Christ his kid was a cheerleader._ She could tell his reaction wasn't entirely genuine, because she twisted her lips and looked down at her plate again. "They're pretty,” she finally said. "I like pom poms."

 _I could just buy you pom poms kid_ , he bit back the urge to reply. Instead he rushed to reassure her. "No, no, that's great. I'm just surprised, why didn't you tell me you wanted to try out?"

One shoulder went up, and finally he got an answer as to why she was so embarrassed: "Mike and Max made this face when I told them -" and here she screwed up her face in impersonation. "You usually agree with them."

He frowned. It was unlike Mike to discourage El unless it was something that could damage her reputation or embarrass her. Max he could understand though - she had taken heat at school for being a tomboy, and had probably been bullied by some of the cheerleaders.

"I'm impressed," Hopper said honestly - for her to take the initiative, especially after Mike hadn't seemed too enthusiastic, was a rare thing indeed.

"Dustin and Lucas said it was a good idea,” she said with that small, crooked grin that she used when she was slightly embarrassed.

They both started as they heard the faint honking of a car horn. El bolted to her feet. "Mike!"

"Yeah, yeah." The day after Mike had gotten his license he had started picking El up for school despite the fact that he had to drive out of his way to do so. Hopper pretended that the drive really did take an extra half hour longer than it did when he drove El to school himself. As long as he wasn't getting any phone calls from the school, he wasn't complaining. “You need a ride after track?”

“Mike is tutoring after school, he said he’ll wait,” she said, shouldering her bags. Then she stopped and thrust a piece of paper at him. “This is the list I need for cheerleading.”

“Huh?” Hopper unfolded the paper - it was a bulleted list of supplies that El was responsible for having by the first day of cheerleading bootcamp. His eyebrows went down. “Why do you need new tennis shoes? What’s wrong with your track shoes?”

“Gotta match,” El said, distracted. She lurched up onto tiptoe, kissed his cheek, and darted for the door. “See you for dinner.”

“Yeah, bye kid,” he dismissed, tucking the paper into his breast pocket - he’d deal with that at work - and sat down to finish his breakfast before he had to leave.

It was after eight thirty when he left the cabin, and at a quarter ‘til nine he pulled into the diner - coffee for the office would brighten up a Tuesday morning, and he’d lost a bet to Powell anyway - and it was something of a surprise when he walked in and found Dustin and Will sitting in a booth with a girl, instead of in school where they were certainly supposed to be.

He placed his order and walked over to the table. It was nice to know he could still appear imposing - not that El or any of her friends ever listened to him anyway - because Dustin’s eyes widened when he saw Hopper approaching, and he thought the girl with them might duck under the table.

Will, infuriatingly, just raised his eyebrows. He looked like nothing less than the jaws of life would pry him away from the cup of coffee in his hands. “Hi Chief.”

“Will.” Hopper tipped his hat back. “Does your mother know you’re skipping school?”

“Does my mother know you know I’m skipping school?” Will replied immediately, and Hopper resisted the urge to curse out loud. It was true. Joyce knew that Will wasn’t exactly an honor roll student anymore, and had skipped school before, but she knew a fraction of what Hopper knew. The reason he had resisted telling her was the same reason he wouldn’t tell her about this: he could tolerate many things, but Joyce Byers’ anger wasn’t one of them. 

“Who’s this one?” Hopper asked, nodding at the girl and deliberately avoiding Will’s question. She seemed nice enough, with dirty blonde hair pulled over one shoulder in a curtain, and a sweet face with eyes almost as big as Will’s. She’d never been to the cabin before so he’d never met her, and she was clearly terrified of being caught ditching class by the chief of police himself.

“That’s Julie,” Will said dismissively. “She does theater with us.”

“Hm.” Hopper sniffed, and then turned his attention to Dustin.

Dustin looked on the verge of bolting. Hopper pinned him with a glare. “And you, I want an explanation from you.” He reached into his pocket and took out the list that El had given him before school that morning. “What’s going on with this?”

It took Dustin a moment to realize what he was looking at, but once he did his face lit up. “El made it! Will, El’s a cheerleader!”

“El said Mike made a face,” Hopper said, overriding Will’s response. “But that you encouraged her. What do you know about that?”

That had been his greatest concern - El trusted Mike’s opinion more than anyone else’s in the world. If he wasn’t going to support her then Hopper needed to have a conversation with him about not letting his opinion be more important than El’s best interests. He trusted Mike with El, but he was still an opinionated teenage boy who could have a lapse in judgement.

To his great relief, however, Dustin just rolled his eyes. “Mike made a face because he hates football. He never actually said anything about cheerleading, he just went off for like a half hour about how stupid football is. I don’t think he realized that El was even still listening.” He stopped, thought about it, and added, “Oh, he owes me for this. It’s pretty much the only way Mike’s ever going to get a date with a cheerleader.”

“That sounds about right,” Hopper rumbled, and Will and Julie both laughed in agreement.

From the counter he saw the waitress wave, holding up a tray with four coffees and a bag with warm biscuits. "Allright," Hopper said, taking the paper back from Dustin and folding it into his breast pocket once again. He turned away from them and put his hat back on. "Go to school, all of you."

"We will,” Will said reassuringly. "I have to paint Havana for Guys and Dolls today."

Hopper stopped, opened his mouth, closed it, wiped a hand over his eyes, and then sighed and kept on walking. Behind him, he could hear Will and Dustin laughing and reassuring Julie. Easy for them to laugh, thinking about Ole Chief Hopper, the push over. He’d never tell them that he was remembering yanking a foot long snake out of Will’s mouth, praying for him to take a breath. He’d forgive the kid his truancy, just for surviving that shit.

That didn’t make it a less bitter pill to swallow. He wasn't going to get them in trouble though. Sometimes you just weren't in the headspace to go to class. God knew he'd skipped a number of classes when he'd been in school.

Usually with Will's mother, now that he thought about it.

The coffee and biscuits got him enough good will that he was able to disappear into his office, shutting the door behind him while Callahan and Powell were bickering over who got to pick first.

He sat down at his desk, ignored the folders and forms that Flo had so kindly organized for him, took the paper out of his pocket, and stared down at it.

Cheerleaders needed a lot. Besides the uniform, El was expected to pay for new shoes, new socks, warm up sweats, a windbreaker, a turtleneck to go under the uniform, bloomers, and a hair bow. The jacket, turtleneck, and hair bow all needed specific embroidery. 

Along with the list of supplies was a schedule - practice three days a week, and the football games on Fridays - and a code of conduct - which mostly seemed to boil down to _wear uniforms to school on game days_ and _don't be late for the bus_.

At the bottom was a phone number - the local sporting goods store, with the advisory that they'd give a 15% discount if everything was bought through them. Which meant Hopper had to make the choice between letting Sal Sweeny gouge him on a uniform or going to buy cheap tennis shoes and white tube socks at K-Mart.

Already he could picture El's face if he presented her with a bag from K-Mart. _Gotta match_ , she'd told him that morning, and if there was anything he knew about teenagers, it was that they'd be able to tell which plain white tennis shoes came from K-Mart and which ones were properly bought from the sporting goods store. 

With a sigh, he picked up the phone and called Sal's, and discovered exactly how much money being a cheerleader was going to cost him. He swore. Sal's laughter trailed up through the phone line, and Hopper was tempted to hang up on him if he didn't think Sal would tack on another fifty bucks out of pure spite.

So he told Sal El's measurements, promised he'd stop after work to put down a deposit, and politely said goodbye.

Then he opened the top drawer, pulled out the false bottom, and picked up a key ring with two tiny keys on it. He went to the filing cabinet in the corner of the room, kneeled down so he could unlock the bottom drawer, and in the very back found the bottle of Wild Turkey that he'd stashed years ago.

It had been a long time since he'd felt the urge to have a drink at work, but dropping a small fortune so El could parade around in a tiny skirt for a single school year was enough to push him off that wagon.

It wasn't just that teenagers were expensive - though he'd been mildly surprised by how much more expensive teenagers were than babies because he'd thought Sara had needed so much between diapers and toys and special furniture - it was that they were _unexpectedly_ expensive.

Every time things were going smoothly, and he was feeling good about having bills paid, here came El, needing money for a field trip, or the arcade, or late fees for the library because she'd been too busy making out with Mike and had left the books in the backseat of his car.

And that was what he considered the _normal_ expenses - there were still expenses related to her upbringing, and her powers: the electricity bill for a nightlight and the television, which she liked to keep running at all hours, the invoice from her tutors, because she hadn't been taught beyond first grade in the lab, and the lightbulbs and dishes that fractured when she was upset about something.

Last summer they'd fought over the phone bill, and she'd gotten so angry that the hot water tank had exploded. It had been several days of choosing between cold showers or mooching off of the Byers until he could have a new one installed.

This was a whole new level, however. The fact that she’d been too embarrassed to tell him what she was trying meant that he couldn’t even try to prepare, mentally or monetarily. 

Hopper drained what was left from his coffee and tipped the bottle, pouring himself a finger, pausing to drink it, and then two more, which he nursed. Rubbing his chin, he tried to shake the feeling of being backed into a corner.

His promise - to himself, and to her - had been that El would live as normal a life as possible. What was more normal than the American high school cheerleader? He groaned at the thought.

“Chief.” Flo gave exactly one courtesy knock before barging in. “Powell needs - for heaven’s sake Jim!”

He looked up at her, and then back down at the bottle in his hand guiltily. Flo strode up to the desk, hands on hips. “I haven’t caught you with a bottle in the office for years. I thought we were past this.”

Indeed, the last time she’d caught him with the bottle at work had been the period of time between retrieving Will from the Upside-Down and finding El in the woods. The stress of worrying about Will’s recovery and the guilt of knowing it was his fault El was missing had been nearly unbearable. Once he’d brought her to the cabin, it had been easy to lock the bottle away.

He didn’t respond, looking down at the desk like an ashamed teenager as she reached out and tugged the bottle from his hand. “You want to tell me what’s going on?” Flo prompted, screwing the lid back on.

Pushing the paper towards her and mumbling, “El made cheerleading squad,” certainly didn’t make him feel _less_ like a teenager in trouble.

Flo lifted her glasses up to her eyes, bending over his desk to inspect the paper. The bottle was braced against her hip. It took her a minute to process what she was reading, and then she broke out into a broad grin. “Oh Chief,” she breathed. “I know what this means, but that’s no reason to take to the bottle.”

“You’re right,” he agreed. “I could probably pawn the bottle and get a little money to put towards the uniform.”

To his consternation, Flo’s smile somehow _grew_. “ _That’s_ what you’re so upset about? The money?”

“Yeah.” Hopper gestured towards the paper as if it had offended him. “It’s expensive!”

Flo shook her head. “And here I thought you were worried about homecoming.”

“Home what?” What did homecoming have to do with anything? It was just a game and a dance. Not that he’d gone to any of it when he’d been in school.

“Jim.” Flo had a grin tugging at her cheeks. “Don’t tell me you forgot. At the homecoming game all the seniors are announced and walk across the field through a big balloon arch with their parents.”

Hopper froze. “What’s that now?”

“And I don’t know about Callahan and Powell,” Flo continued triumphantly, “but I, for one, will be in the front row of the bleachers with my camera.”

“ _Flo_ ,” Hopper said warningly, but she was undeterred.

“I think we have an empty space on the bulletin board where a nice glossy 8 x 10 print would hang nicely,” she mused, turning to walk out of his office.

“Flo!” he protested, standing up to chase after her, and for the time being all thoughts of uniform expenses were driven from his mind.

***

“It’s ridiculous,” Hopper was ranting into the phone. “Completely ridiculous. Are you listening Joyce? Do you understand how -”

“Ridiculous it is?” Joyce interrupted, and Hopper huffed impatiently. “I can understand you’re upset about something Hop, but you haven’t actually told me what happened.”

What had happened was that El had ruined one of his favorite pastimes for the rest of his life.

The previous Friday he had been home alone, waiting for El to come home from the football game. It wasn’t unusual for her to be late - sometimes the party hung out, sometimes her and Mike went out, and sometimes she didn’t come home at all, spending the night at the Wheelers’ or with one of her friends. They were seniors, on the cusp of adulthood, and he tried hard not to cramp her style.

When the phone had rung it had been Callahan, asking for back up breaking up a party that, judging by the noise complaints, had gotten completely out of control.

There were better ways to spend a Friday night, but there was something special about watching idiot teenagers scatter that he did enjoy. The party in question was being thrown at the Drennan household - a set of lawyers who'd popped out three blonde sons who had all, in turn, served as the Hawkins High football captain their senior year. The oldest boy, Mark, was in law school at Case Western, and the middle one, Scott, had gotten a scholarship to play at Purdue. The youngest, Rodney, was in El's class, and while Hopper thought he was an entitled brat, he'd never given El any problems, and he'd never been caught speeding, which meant that Hopper, if presented with the opportunity, wouldn't go out of his way to give the kid any trouble.

Until now.

They had pulled up to the gated community where the Drennan’ lived, and as soon as he saw the number of cars stacked in the driveway and on the shoulder of the cul-de-sac he’d immediately radio'd the county for backup. Judging by the wreckage on the front lawn, somebody had provided these high school kids with ample amounts of alcohol - and an insurance claim would surely have to be submitted on the Drennans’ behalf, depending on what kind of story Rodney was about to spin.

The second the kids noticed the flashing police lights they had scattered. The house had looked like a smoke bomb had gone off before a SWAT team had trampled through it - furniture was overturned, there were holes in the wall and mysterious stains on the carpet. The atmosphere had been a horrific combination of spilled alcohol, puked alcohol, tobacco and weed.

Hopper could hear the sirens already approaching over the shouting of the teenagers, and had thought there was a good chance they'd still be able to round up a good number of them - especially since he'd parked the Blazer so that the cul-de-sac was blocked. He wouldn't rule out the inevitable idiots who tried to drive on the lawns to get away, but hopefully the county sheriff was blocking the entrance to the community just like he'd said they would.

Powell and Callahan had fanned out, but Hopper had waded through the crowd, determined not to let Rodney slip through his fingers. He was sure that one or even both of the older brothers had supplied the booze, but either way, he wasn't going to give the kid a chance to hide and report to the station with Mommy and Daddy and Daddy's Best Lawyer Friend on Monday.

He had been very focused on his goal, and thus not paying very close attention to the chaos as kids tried to escape. Not even slipping in a puddle of vomit and almost wrenching his knee had been enough to distract him. It was out on the deck that he had finally cornered the kid, and for a full ten seconds Rodney had looked over the railing, sincerely debating whether or not it was worth risking the two story jump - Hopper looked beyond as well, noticed the patio furniture floating in the pool, which explained the kid's hesitation - but when Hopper got a hand on his shoulder Rodney simply slumped.

"Whaddya say kid?" Hopper asked him, pleasant enough, taking in the ruined look on his face. "Want to do this the easy way or the hard way?"

The kid had been calm enough as Hopper cuffed him, read him his rights, and was silent until Hopper was guiding him back through the house to sit him in the Blazer. As they had crossed the living room, he shouted out, "Hopper, do something! Your dad is arresting me!"

It had been such a strange thing to say that for a moment Hopper thought he was just shouting drunk nonsense - He, Hopper, was already arresting him. What did Rodney want him to do?

And then he had turned his head, looked where Rodney was looking, and met a pair of dark, panicked eyes.

The sight of her was so unexpected, almost comical, that for a moment he just stood there dumbly and blinked. El was pushed up against the wall of the living room, where she had been looking for a chance to make a break for the front door. If he hadn’t already been positive he was looking at her, the sight of Max, holding El’s hand with her curtain of hair hiding half of her face, confirmed it.

El was still in her ugly orange and navy cheering uniform, having only thrown on the warm up sweats underneath. The ribbon around her top knot had come loose, hanging limply around the ragged curls that had fallen into her face. The knuckles clinging to Max’s hand had gone white.

“What are you doing here?” Hopper asked, stunned.

“What are _you_ doing here?” El shot back.

“What does it look like I’m doing?!” Hopper shouted, gesturing around them at the teenagers fleeing the party like rats from a sinking ship. She opened her mouth to respond, but he waved impatiently. “No. Don’t even. You go wait for me in the Blazer. _Both of you_ ,” he emphasized, swinging his eyes to Max, whose face was blushing a deep scarlet.

El hesitated, and Hopper bit back the urge to shout at her. Instead he clenched his jaw and said firmly, “I mean it Jane.”

The fact that he had called her Jane was a sign that he was really, truly serious. They’d had a talk about names when he’d shown her the birth certificate, discussed whether or not she wanted to be called Jane or El. _Names are like a gift from your parents_ , he’d explained, _but lots of people have nicknames that fit them better._ It had been her choice, he’d promised her, and then she’d told him that El was a gift from Mike, and that El was who she wanted to be. 

Hopper had always respected that. He hadn’t called her Eleven since the night she’d shut the gate, and without the luxury of a middle name on her birth certificate, _Jane_ was the best way to signal to her that he was speaking to her as a guardian and that she needed to take him seriously right now.

(He didn’t have nightmares about his mother standing on the front porch of the house, both hands on her hips, shouting “James Forsyth Hopper!”, but that was only because he’d lived through so many nightmarish events since those summer evenings in childhood.)

El visibly bristled at the use of her given name, but tugged Max along with her towards the front door. They had a long wait ahead of them - not only breaking up the party, but signing off with county that the scene was secure, initiating the mountains of paperwork that this evening would entail, and dealing with the horde of angry parents who couldn’t decide if they were upset with him or their underage offspring would take hours. 

It was after midnight by the time he had hauled himself back into the Blazer and looked at the two girls. El’s face was unimpressed. Max had looked terrified.

“Well.” he’d said, starting the truck.

“I’m hungry.” El said immediately, and Max had cringed.

“There is food at the cabin,” Hopper had told El. Then to Max, he’d added, “You’re going to sleep in El’s bed tonight. Tomorrow morning you can shower and I’ll take you home.”

He’d been angry at both of them, but he wasn’t going to deliver Max back to her stepfather stinking like booze. As far as he knew Neil had never raised a hand to the girl, but he wasn’t going to test Hargrove’s resolve with a dishevelled seventeen year old who had very obviously been partying.

Max had deflated in relief, but El had looked mutinous. Hopper shot her a look. “You want to tell me what you were thinking?”

“I wasn’t drunk,” El had said immediately. “The entire team went.”

“That’s not much of an excuse kid,” Hopper had growled at her. He could tell by the way her jaw was set and his heart was pounding that this was gearing up to be a major fight.

“You arrested my teammates!” El had exclaimed, slapping her thighs in frustration.

“So? They were breaking the law!” The traffic light ahead of them had flickered, _redgreenred_ , and Max appeared to be trying to crawl under the bench seat of the Blazer.

“So I have to go to school on Monday!” El had insisted. “I have practice!”

"Kid, after tonight you'll be lucky to go to school on Monday," Hopper had ground out, hands clenching at the steering wheel.

"You embarrassed me!" El burst out -

\- And Hopper cut himself off when he realized Joyce was laughing at him.

"Joyce!" he protested, wounded.

"I'm sorry but what did you expect? She's a teenager. She hitchhiked to Chicago!"

"She took a bus!" Hopper snapped. Only he was allowed to use Chicago against El. "And I don't even know what to do with her! Joyce, I busted her at a kegger and somehow _she's_ mad at _me_!"

Joyce's laughter rang through the phone line, and it wasn't infuriating it would have been heartwarming. "She hasn't spoken to you since?"

"Not since I took Max home Saturday morning, and " Hopper confirmed, eyeing her closed bedroom door. He'd stopped her from dragging the television into her bedroom on Sunday afternoon, which hadn't improved her temper at all. "Geez. Did your boys ever get into this shit?"

"I don't know, did you arrest Will on Friday?" Joyce countered, and she still sounded far too amused at the situation, considering that Hopper had called her for sympathy. "Or Jonathan, ever?"

He was quiet while he thought about it - no, it didn't make sense that after growing up with Lonnie, that either of those boys would be party animals.

"Of course," Joyce continued quietly, "There was that time with the bear trap."

"Technically that was Callahan," Hopper pointed out, rubbing his temples, trying to ward off the impending headache. He sighed and turned towards the kitchen, pulling the phone line taut as it reached its limits - just enough long for him to reach into the back of the cabinet, find that familiar bottle. “I have no idea what to do. I know we ran around, but we weren’t out going to wild parties.”

“Running around is putting it mildly,” Joyce was still laughing. Hopper frowned as he poured a shot and threw it back. “And we weren’t going to the wild parties that the football team was throwing because only the cool kids got invited to them.”

“That’s - that’s not - we were cool!” he protested. They weren’t jocks, but Hopper had his own car and a naive mother, while Joyce had all the personal freedom of an adult - her family hadn’t had any money, even then, for her to afford to get into real trouble. She and Hopper and their small group of friends had known from the beginning that they weren’t getting any letterman jackets or class rings or fancy scholarships. 

Hopper’s scholarship had been to Vietnam. 

“It’s sweet that you think I was cool Hop,” from the other side of the line Hopper could hear the click of her lighter, then the exhale as she took the first drag. “But you might need to come to terms with the fact that your daughter might be cooler than we are. Or ever were.”

“Wait,” Hopper was instantly distracted from his troubles with El. “You didn’t think I was cool?”

***

Hopper was just getting ready to leave when he heard the commotion, a full ten seconds before the front door of the cabin burst open. It wasn't often that Hopper was caught off guard, but he wasn't expecting anybody, and so the folders filled with papers that he'd been preparing to drop off at the station (along with the grocery list for afterwards) went flying.

"Jesus Christ - El?" It _was_ his daughter - it couldn't have been anyone else, since the doors had been deadbolted and they were the only two with the keys - but she wasn't supposed to be home for hours yet. She threw herself into his arms, papers crumpling under her dirty tennis shoes. "What are you doing here?"

She was crying loudly, and he couldn't make out the words underneath the tears. Hopper looked up, and standing in the doorway were Nancy and Max, looking somewhat sheepish. "What is going on?"

Nancy had made a special trip home for the weekend, just to take El and Max shopping for prom dresses. The plans had been made weeks in advance, carefully orchestrated - they were going to get lunch and go browsing through the fancy boutiques in Indianapolis. It was mostly for fun, since neither girl had all that much money to spend, but it was a chance to feel grown up while they tried on pretty dresses.

It had been Hopper's idea - and didn't he feel like a sap, getting sentimental about El's senior prom when he hadn't even gone to his own?

But.

Senior prom was the last hurrah before graduation, and after high school graduation things got murky for El - and Hopper by extension. They'd had several discussions as she had began her senior year, mirroring the discussions she was having with her friends: what was going to happen after graduation? Did she want to do anything? What would be safe for her? What would she enjoy?

Most importantly, what would happen to her once her friends went away to college?

He was willing to pay for college for the kid, if that was what she wanted - but it wasn't. She was making it through high school, but the next level of education intimidated her, particularly after Hopper had explained that it was different from high school, that it was meant to prepare her for a job.

It wasn't like he could blame her - how was it fair to ask her to pick an adult career when she'd never had a childhood? They'd figure something out, and the fact was she was far more worried about Mike than herself.

Mike had been accepted to Indiana State, all the way in Terre Haute.

It wasn't an impossible distance, just a couple hours by car, but to El it might as well have been the Upside Down. Not going wasn't an option for him, and while he'd never asked, Hopper knew Mike's plans were ambitious, because he'd overheard him telling El multiple times: murmured reassurances while they sat on the front porch, crackling promises over the SuperComm, wishful optimism while they worked on homework together.

Mike wanted to major in engineering, a natural continuation of his interest in electronics and his detail oriented mind, and with a degree in engineering he could get a job that meant he could take care of El - that she could do whatever she needed or whatever made her happy. The kid had been trying to take care of El since they were 12, and had never once wavered from that responsibility.

That didn't mean he wasn't a teenage boy who could make a stupid mistake and hurt El's feelings, inadvertently or not. Hopper knew the kid loved El - and not just stupid teenage first puppy love, actually loved her - but that didn't make Hopper less worried. _The world was so much bigger than Hawkins_. What would happen if he went to a party and got drunk and made a bad decision? What would happen if he’d said he’d come home one weekend and then couldn’t?

What would happen if he had to break a promise, something Mike had never done to El before?

It was all out of Hopper's control, and with no way to reassure El that everything would be okay - because friends don't lie - he'd settled for making sure that her senior year was everything she wanted it to be. Which meant walking with her at homecoming (and letting Flo put a picture on the bulletin board), getting her a driver's license (even though she still preferred letting Mike drive her everywhere), and letting her stay out at all hours (she had loved midnight bowling, though seemed mostly confused the one time they went to a late night showing of Rocky Horror Picture Show).

Who knew what would happen once Mike and Lucas moved away? Once Max got placed with her apprenticeship and moved out of the Hargrove household? He wanted El to have as much fun as she could now, before everything changed.

Which was why he'd made careful plans over the past month. He'd already known that he was going all out for prom, but when he'd found the piece of paper, torn out of a catalogue, shoved between the pages of her history notebook, Hopper had known what he had to do.

It had involved taking out a new credit line, but he'd assumed at the time that it would be worth it to make El happy.

At the moment, however, her face was pressed into his chest so tightly he had no idea how she was breathing, let along crying, but her shoulders were heaving, and she was gripping the back of his shirt so tightly he could feel her nails through the fabric.

Nancy shrugged. "The dress -"

Hopper's heart dropped in his chest. "Shit. Was it the wrong one? El, kid, I'm so sorry, I thought -"

"No that's definitely not it." Max shook her head.

Despite El's tears, he was momentarily relieved. The dress in question was a magenta pink, one shouldered, corset backed, multi-tiered ruffled hem of a monstrosity that posed as a ball gown. El hadn't told him about it, or even dared to ask - she was well aware of their budget, and rarely pressed the issue unless it was something she needed. He'd found the picture though, and judging by the well worn crease it was obviously something that she had looked at often.

It was also more expensive than Diane's wedding dress had been.

He'd paid for a petticoat. He hadn't even known what a petticoat was until he'd called the boutique and asked them to order the dress.

The plan had been to surprise El, have her show up at the boutique and find the dress she wanted with her name already on it. It was all supposed to be part of their girly day out. They'd left early for lunch and Hopper hadn't been expecting them back until closer to dinner - and yet here they were, just a few hours later, and El hadn't yet managed to say a coherent word.

"Well what happened?" Hopper demanded, guiding El to sit next to him on the couch. He craned his head, trying to make eye contact with El. "You like the dress, right?"

She looked up at him with red, swollen eyes and trembling lips. "It's. The. _Prettiest_!" she managed to choke out before convulsing again and burying her face in his shoulder.

Max was in the kitchen, filling a glass of water. Hopper looked at Nancy. "We showed up to the dress shop, told them her name, and she didn't believe them when they said the dress was hers. Had to show her the receipt with your name and everything. She kind of just -" Nancy gestured uselessly to El.

"This whole time?" Hopper asked in amazement. 

Nancy shrugged. “Kind of. It took us a while to convince her to try it on so they could size it and hem it -”

“And then it took us about a half hour to convince her to take it back off again and actually leave it at the store.” Max finished, holding the glass of water in front of El. “Here, you’re probably dehydrated.”

“She was still-” Nancy gestured towards El again, “- when we left the shop, so we just came home.”

“It seemed like the right thing to do.” Max said, sitting on the arm of the couch so she could rub El’s shoulder.

Which was a diplomatic way of saying that there was no point in continuing the day because El was so emotionally compromised.

“So,” Hopper craned his neck to look down at El. “You’re happy, right? This is happy?”

“Yes.” Max and Nancy both intoned at the same time. El gave him a watery smile and nodded.

“They said it would take a couple weeks to do the alterations, but they’ll call you.” Nancy said, standing up. “Come on, Max, I’ll give you a ride home.”

Max leaned over to give El a hug and muttered, “Call me tonight?”

El waved her hand as if to acquiesce, and the moment the door clicked shut behind them she whimpered and clapped her hands over her face.

“El, kid, come on.” Hopper tried to coax, but there was nothing to do but let her cry it out. They sat there together the rest of the afternoon, the shadows on the cabin floor growing longer, as El cried. Every time she seemed to calm a bit and he thought that the worst of her fit had passed, she’d hiccup and start up again, leaving him with nothing to do but rub her back and murmur pointless reassurances. At one point she cried so hard she coughed and gagged, and he seriously worried that she might throw up.

In the early evening she finally fell asleep, propped up against him, and Hopper gave up on the idea of eating dinner. Once he was sure she was actually asleep and not just dozing, he carefully maneuvered her onto her back and covered her with a blanket, smoothing back the frizzy, wild curls from her forehead.

Then he went into the kitchen and stood in front of the cabinet and considered.

Considered that El, who had probably single-handedly saved the world, deserved every single nice thing that she could want. Considered that she could have done better than him in the father department, but could also do (and had done) a lot worse. Considered that she loved surprises, because she had been raised in an environment where she didn’t always get things that she _needed_ , let alone wanted. Considered that, despite how very far she’d come in so very few years, she was still so emotionally immature that crying was her default reaction to good or bad feelings.

Considered that a pretty dress had just made her so happy she’d nearly vomited.

He didn’t bother with the glass. Unscrewing the lid, he tilted back the bottle and took a generous swig.

It was the best thing he’d ever done that had made him feel like total shit.

***

He could see the sunlight before he even opened his eyes, blaring behind his closed eyelids like an alarm when El got up and pulled back one of the curtains.

It was rare that she got up before him. Hopper told himself that he liked to be up before El to make sure she ate a good breakfast, was ready for school, _hell_ , just make sure the kid didn’t wake up to a quiet, empty house, so she knew she was in a home and not in a cold, dark lab.

But the truth was there was still an urgent, cautious voice deep inside him that told him to make sure the cabin was secure, the tripwire still hanging, the doors still bolted. Nobody had found them in the night. Nobody was waiting to ambush them. El was not and never would be his first line of defense. He was hers.

He’d never found anything more suspicious than a confused squirrel, and once, a very confused Maxine Mayfield, who was supposed to be picking her up, but in five years it was hard to break the habit.

The only time he ever failed to wake up before El was after nights like the previous one, when he’d been alone at the cabin, switching out records and steadily working his way through a bottle of whiskey. He didn’t like to drink in front of El, but last night she had been out with Wheeler, and even though she had a curfew he hadn’t strictly enforced it since the previous fall, after the millionth time she’d called while already out, asking if she could just stay with Mike, or Will or any one of her little friends. 

He had no illusions about what they were getting up to, but they didn’t get into half the trouble he’d gotten himself into as a teeanger, and that, he thought, meant he could give them a little leeway. She was a good kid and was generally respectful of the curfew even if she pretty much did whatever she wanted.

Besides, she had been… off, since graduation. This summer was for them to have fun, but they were all acutely aware that every passing day was another day until Mike left, or Lucas moved. Max had already found an efficiency, and even though she couldn’t move until the end of July when she started to get paid through her electricians apprenticeship, she was already combing through thrift shops, looking for stuff to move into it and storing what things she had been able to pay for at the Byers, where Neil couldn’t get ahold of it.

Knowing that Will (committed only to taking art classes at the community college) and Dustin (deferring for a year, for reasons Hopper had never gotten the full story) would still be in Hawkins was cold comfort. Even Hopper could feel the clock ticking down, and if he could feel it, then he was sure it was weighing heavily on El. 

She had been quiet with him lately, holed up in her room. Once he’d seen a copy of the local Terre Haute newspaper on the kitchen table, and it had nearly broken his heart when he’d asked about it she’d simply said in a quiet tone, “Mike gave it to me.”

It was going to be harder than he’d imagined for El to be separated from Mike and his friends - which made it even more difficult for him, as Hopper had been nursing a hope that maybe, finally, now, on the cusp of adulthood he could tell her - but no.

He hadn’t even heard El come home last night, which later he’d just have to add to the list of _Things Jim Hopper Feels Bad About_.

It felt like his eyes were glued shut. He couldn’t scrape them open even to try and give the kid a reassuring smile. He couldn’t decide if he felt bad or not about the fact that she didn’t even try to rouse him.

Instead he dozed, and heard peripherally as El puttered in the kitchen, as quietly as she was able - and then the smells of toast and coffee wafted towards him. His stomach roiled, and he felt the saliva in his mouth turn acidic.

 _God bless the kid_ , he thought as he vaguely overheard the phone call, almost certainly to Mike: “Hopper’s sick today. Can I? - Thank you.”

They whispered plans to meet up, and it wasn’t much longer until he heard El shut the door quietly behind her. The three deadbolts clicking in unison rang in his ears.

Days like today were the only time El ever left the cabin without telling him where she was going, although he knew he’d find a note when he was finally able to roll himself out of bed. She was reliable like that - ever since the incident at the drive in, she hadn’t, as far as he knew, lied about her whereabouts again.

 _Friends don’t lie_.

It was the number one rule in El’s life, a standard that she held absolutely everybody to unquestioningly. It made sense - a childhood of being lied to, manipulated, and abused meant that El needed (and deserved) to have complete faith in everybody in her life now.

He knew she was always confused on days like today - yesterday they’d had a good day, enjoying lunch together outside on the cabin’s rickety porch, the radio playing softly while she’d told him about the Indiana Jones movie the party was planning on seeing later that evening. Everything would have seemed fine to her when she had kissed him goodbye and taken off for her movie date, promising that she wouldn’t be too late. To wake up and find him sick and hungover wasn’t something she expected, and he knew she always worried about what was wrong to make him feel like he needed the bottle.

It was impossible to explain to El that it was the sight of her with her pink lipgloss and ruffled navy jumper that had made his heart ache, the little way she’d waved at him as she had slipped out the door, that’d had him staggering to the cabinet for the bottle.

How to explain that he was lying, and breaking promises - to her, and to himself, when he promised he would tell her the truth?

The memory of sitting in that room in the Lab and facing down Brenner was as fresh and visceral as if it had happened yesterday. There were still so many little details he couldn’t escape: how hard the metal chair had been beneath him, how he’d been sweating despite how goddamn cold it was, the way Will’s tinny voice had been ringing in his ears to match his heartbeat ( _hurry, hurry, hurry_ ), and Brenner’s face, impassive towards Hopper’s life until the mention of his prized subject.

Hopper could try and tell himself that he’d been backed into a corner, had no other choice, but that didn’t change the fact that he’d taken boltcutters and strolled into that lab prepared to make a deal. 

( _hurryhurryhurry_ )

He’d known he was going to trade Eleven for Will. What he hadn’t known was that the kids were sitting ducks at the school, that Nancy and Jonathan had taken off in the car that Hopper had hoped they could use to escape somehow.

The worst part was that he had tried and tried to lie to himself - reassure himself that he would have done something different if he had known that the kids were alone, but that just wasn’t true. Will had been floundering, Joyce had been frantic, and Eleven had done a good enough job staying hidden up until this point.

When he’d found the kid in the woods just over a month later, he’d compounded the lie: _okay Hopper, keep her safe, you betrayed her, but now you can take care of her and help her transition to a normal life, be a normal girl, no more tests, give her everything, keep her safe, it’s what you owe her_.

As if any of it would make up for that night of terror, the separation from her friends, and weeks of foraging and killing squirrels in the woods.

It had taken months for him to realize how important promises and lies were to El, how a promise meant an absolute guarantee, how a lie meant permanently broken trust. It was then that his conscious became to whisper to him: _tell her the truth, she would want to know, she deserves to know._

At first he’d quashed the instinct because he hadn’t wanted to break the fragile trust between them. If the kid stormed out, where would she go? Who could she trust to make sure she was safe? He knew every bit of ugliness that involved Hawkins Lab, he knew how she’d been raised, and he knew they were still looking for her. He had contacts, as Chief of Police, that were imperative to her safety. She had to stay with him.

Then he’d convinced himself that he was being selfish, that El deserved to know every way that her caregivers had manipulated her life - if nothing else, then to know that the people who cared for her would always be honest with her, something that had never been true in her life before now.

Except that every time he had a fit of nobility and prepared himself for the difficult conversation, something new happened: El cried out of frustration with English, or she had a nightmare about the Bad Men, or she would visit with Mama, or any other terrible reminder of the difficulties she had lived through would force her to face the fact that she wasn’t a normal kid, that she had been given a late start in life, and was still struggling to catch up.

And that was on top of the normal teenage angst: fighting with her boyfriend, worrying about passing her driver's exam, having two tests and an essay due the same day, performing well at her next track meet.

How could he lay on her the burden of knowing that the person she trusted to guide her and provide for her through those difficulties had once handed her back over to her abusers?

He couldn’t hurt El more than he already had. Some nights the burden was too heavy even for him, and on those nights, he pulled the bottle of whiskey out of the cabinet, opened a fresh pack of cigarettes, and sat at the kitchen table chain smoking and feeling bad for himself until he could stumble into his bed, still full clothed, early the next morning.

El had only asked him why once, the second or third time it happened, and Hopper had debated how to reply before answering quietly, “There are some things it only hurts to talk about.”

And the worst part is, El had known exactly what he meant by that. He despaired to wonder what memory had flashed to her that had caused her to agree to readily.

She’d never asked him again. On the rare occasion that she got up before him, and saw where he was, she simply made herself scarce, and gave him time to recover.

He loved that kid, and keeping this secret from her was ultimately another way Hopper protected her, not an act of cowardice. Telling her would only hurt her, and make him feel better, and that wasn’t the way parenting was supposed to work.

And for the times he couldn’t convince himself that was the truth, he had a bottle of whiskey, waiting in the cabinet.

A week after this El would tell him that she and Mike were getting married, and that she was moving to Terre Haute with him at the end of summer, and all of her behavior that season would make sense, and all of Hopper’s previous benders would _pale_ in comparison.


End file.
